The Life of Portia Boyd

Prologue

You think that everything is going to go right when you grow up. But when you get there its worse. It's as bad as can be.

Well sometimes, it works out quite well for some people who know they can get through it all, but for the rest of us who only hope and dream, it doesn't.

Like me, I'm a sad story. I have just given my daughter away for adoption. It's the best thing to do, I know it. I keep telling myself that all the time.

But then I know that there was no need. She might never know who she is. Who she belongs to. What she is.

I hope she's a witch. I hope she gets into Hogwarts. But I won't know. It's not like I'm going back.

That's another thing. I can't go back to my friends. My ex-boyfriend, especially him.

My old boyfriend since fourth year. Remus Lupin. The sweetest person I know, most properly that I'll ever know. But I don't trust him.

You see a load of people, well wizards and witches have been dying, murdered and disappearing. I mean I suppose it's to be expected. I mean it is a war. People die all the time. It's just how it is. And don't think that I'm some sad person who loves the thought of war because I don't. I know its bad but that's what war is.

I wish this war never came around. I mean I had just turned eleven when it first began. I heard about it when my mum and dad were talking about the ministry of magic. I was so scared.

I hoped and prayed that I would go to Hogwarts, that I wouldn't die young and that I would meet the guy of my dreams. It's every eleven year old witch's dream.

All these things so far have happened. I went to Hogwarts, I class myself still as young and I am still alive and I met the guy of my dreams though it took me four long lovely years to notice that it was him.

But enough about that, it's too upsetting to say why I left him. It makes me sound so afraid. I have only been afraid twice in my life. One was when I heard about the war and the other was three months ago. When I was seven months pregnant. With his baby.

I heard he went looking for me. He was in Yorkshire, not in the Dales where I live. But in Hull, Beverly, York and Whitby. I don't think I told him where I lived. Well I told him I lived in Yorkshire, but I didn't say where. He might have been all over the place in Yorkshire.

But my friend Katie, she saw him. And he saw her. And they talked about me. About that I'd left. Katie told me that he missed me.

But I know him. And there's something up. He sneaks away a few days a month.

Yeah, I mean he did it in Hogwarts too. But his mum was dying, everyone knew that. Even his mates went with him sometimes, for moral support suppose.

But now his mum's dead, so he must go somewhere else.

Every time I asked he wouldn't tell me. Like it wasn't my business. But the thing is, when your boyfriend, the boyfriend you're going to marry pops out for a few days in the month, and I mean every month, different days, it is your business.

Well maybe you think I'm bluffing. That I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill. But your wrong, I'm not. Well maybe you should see for yourself. I'm not stopping you.

Though you go back to 1971, when the hippies left the dales after trying to look after animals, but failed because they kept smoking drugs near them.

It's where it all starts, with me watching them leave, on my horse. That day when the war began. That day when my life changed forever, knowing that I would get what I wanted.

Because at first when you're young you always do. I can see that now. I mean you don't get everything, but you get something.

Like muggles don't get to be wizards or witches, but they get to be a part of our lives. They make history better than we do; well that's my point of view.

Well why do I keep talking? I'll let you get going. To my life, to my past. And to me, then my future.

And maybe you ask why you should go? And the answer is because you deserve it. Like some people, you deserve it.

England, the Yorkshire Dales.

The 20^th of July 1971, a week after my birthday.

It was one of the sunniest days that year. Though it was seven o'clock at night, the sun still shone brightly. Like it was midday.

The Yorkshire Dales was a beautiful sight. As it always was in some people's opinion. The little stony walls may have been crumbling and they may have been the sight of several dead baby lambs that had been born that spring, but everyone still said it was beautiful.

The hills were full of grass, the low fields were full of animals and the ponds were full of birds. There was nothing unusual about the Yorkshire Dales that you could see.

But then not many people knew that a family of wizards lived there. No everyone thought that they were a normal loving family. Well they were of course loving to each other and they were a family. However to some people who might find out they wouldn't be so normal.

And that was something that Henry and Jayne Boyd would not let people find out about.

Of course their daughter Portia was not bothered about people finding out, not that she did let them find out. It was just that she never bothered that they would find out.

"Portia, you do think of some of the most stupid things," said her father to her one night after dinner. "What makes you think that they would respect the fact that you're a witch?"

Portia never liked arguing with her parents so she just agreed. Secretly she disagreed, but she wasn't going to say it out loud. She would be smacked for it. And her parents smacked hard.

But on that day it had been a week since Portia's eleventh birthday. She was so happy that she was finally eleven. This meant that she would be receiving her Hogwarts letter soon.

She loved the fact that she would be going to Hogwarts. She would picture herself in Hogwarts robes, carrying Hogwarts books and talking to Hogwarts students.

Then the little ending would make her feel a bit uneasy, the students.

Portia had never really talked to a lot of children before now. Yes she had talked to children before, just not a lot.

She had had friends before. She had had a best friend, but she moved away a few weeks before.

She was a muggle. Her family, with Portia's family were the only people living in the Dales. So when she left, this made Portia be very lonely most of the time.

She had met other children when her father took her and her mother down to London. Since he worked in the ministry of magic which was located in London, under the ground.

She had never been in the actual ministry before but she met people and their families who worked there.

What also made matters worse was that Portia had never talked to the things that her mother said made life hell.

This reminded Portia of the conversation that her mother and herself had about Hogwarts.

****~#~# Flashback #~#~****

"Mother what is Hogwarts like?" she asked her mother one day in spring.

Her mother took time in answering. "It's very good for learning dear."

Portia raised one of her eyebrows but put it back to normal when her mother looked at her. "No mother I mean, what is it like being there?" she decided to explain herself a little more. "What do you see when your there?"

Her mother closed her eyes and smiled. Portia had always adored her smile. It was so perfect. She didn't know why it was, it just was.

Her mother opened her eyes again. "It's a castle, surrounded by a lake." she sighed a lot when she was speaking. "Its one of the biggest lakes in the country. And inside you walk down wooden hallways with pictures that wave, say hello to you or just smile making you feel at home. And there is a hall with five long tables. Four of them for the houses and one for the teachers or professors as you call them. And the common room that you go into every night after lessons is filled with coffee tables, normal tables for the purpose of doing homework, chairs with the softest pillows you can find, a warm fireplace that keeps you warm in the coldest conditions and the four poster beds that make you go to sleep without even thinking about it." When she stopped speaking she jumped a little, like she had just come out of a trance. "Of course it may be different now you're going, you know with the new headmaster."

Portia was smiling. "Mother it sounds wonderful and with the new headmaster I bet it will be just as wonderful if not more wonderful than before."

Her mother smiled again. "One can only hope dear child, one can only hope."

"And what of the other students, what are they like?" asked Portia.

She laughed. "Some are okay, some are not so okay." She closed her eyes again and opened them. "There are children of all different ages. The girls dip their feet in the lake only hoping at the same time that they won't be eaten by the giant squid that lives there. But there are other children that make your life hell."

"Who are they mother?" asked Portia sounding a little nervous.

"They are sometimes the worst things on this planet." Seeing the confused look on Portia's face she answered. "Boys, dearest." She combed back some of Portia's long brown hair. "Stupid boys."

****~#~# End of flashback #~#~****

Yes according to her mother, boys were the thing at Hogwarts that made life hell. Though she never explained why.

And if they were so horrible why they were there, at Hogwarts?

Portia had seen boys. Only a few when she would walk down the alley in London. The ones she saw were all different, nothing like her father who was a fully grown man, an older version of a boy.

She remembered one boy she saw. He had dark hair and the funniest smile ever. She didn't mean nasty funny, she meant nice funny. Laugh funny. Like he was the jester in many fairy tale stories she had read. Though his hair made him look like a prince or a knight or some kind of hero expected in a story.

Though she only glimpsed him for a minute at the most, she got so much feedback in return. Images, thoughts and once a dream where he was at a castle, with a wizard who looked like the powerful Merlin, another knight with almost the same appearance like him. Other faces came and went, especially one who was so different.

He was brown haired with a tint of redness when the sun shone on him. And the most intriguing thing about him was his eyes. They were so grey, so mysterious. She had never seen anything like it before other than her own eyes, which were a lot lighter and bluer than his eyes.

Though the dream she had was years old. She knew from looking at her father that the boy she saw in the street would be different. Bigger and well, more like her father.

Her father was very big. Height and width, he was big in both. He had little hair, which would be a shame for that boy losing that lovely black hair he possessed when she saw him that day.

Her father also had a strong appearance about him, which meant he looked like if any wizard shouted or said something insulting he would make sure they would pay for it and they would know about it.

This was so different to her mother. She looked a lot like Portia.

She had the same brown hair as her, the same face as her and she also looked very young, which made her and Portia look like sisters.

Though, none of her parents had the same eye colour as her.

Her mothers eyes were a dark blue and her fathers were a shade of green.

Portia had often wondered how her eyes came about. When she was eight she concluded that their colours simply mixed together creating a shade of grey.

Portia sat on her horse smiling. She knew how babies came to be. It was a bit hard for her not to notice when she saw animals reproduce every spring.

So there she sat, on her horse, in the Yorkshire Dales. She sat watching the last of the rebel hippies leaving the field they had decided to occupy two years earlier.

She knew that her family would be happy to see them leave.

All they did was smoke drugs and try to save the animals, which they thought were in danger. Though Portia found this rather stupid because the drugs they were smoking were making the animals become more in danger than they had been in before the hippies arrived.

Her mother who was a healer had to regularly go down to the camp to sort out any hippies that had gone too far with the drugs. She hated doing it, but she didn't hate muggles enough to let them die. When she had finished she would cast a charm on the hippies to make them forget what she did. She still didn't want anyone to find out that they were wizards. Even if the hippies were wizards she was not taking any chances.

So finally the hippies left and Portia decided that it was time to go home. She rode her horse to the field she lived in. Waited with her for a few minutes and then set off home.

Her home was a cottage located right next to a little water fall. Though Portia thought that the cottage would flood in the winter because of the rain and snow, it never did. Portia had once thought to ask her father why this was, but then she let her common sense get the better of her and decided not to.

He would most properly say she was a dumb, brainless piece of carcass that lived in the family because she had to. And the end would be the same as the start, the difference being that Portia found out she was a carcass.

She finally reached the door of her cottage after ten minutes when she heard the voices of three people. One voice belonged to her father, one to her mother and one to another person who Portia had no idea of.

"This is just brilliant, werewolves, giants and Dementors will be after his side and he'll take them on." This voice she recognised as her fathers.

Then the second voice spoke, which was her mother. "Henry calm down, we knew when we first heard of him that something like this was going to happen, though I must say I never expected this to happen."

The third voice spoke. "Your wife is right Henry, we expected this when he came up, we knew that something like world domination was going to take place, but not that he would well, you know make beasts of our world to try and join him."

"I just knew we should have killed all werewolves when they were bitten, if we did this wouldn't have happened."

"It's not just the werewolves though is it Henry dear, it's the giants and the Dementors who are after joining him, more than the werewolves are."

"And the werewolves are of course human, thirty or twenty nine nights of the month, its not like they can help that they are dangerous creatures."

Then there was a great thump. Portia guessed that her father had hit the table.

"You don't get it; werewolves are dangerous, all the time." Portia then heard movements. "This is what my department does; protect people against things like them. You must see the werewolf register; there are thousands of them in the country. Either in hiding or living normal lives. It's not right. They will get involved in this war...."

Portia stopped listening to gasp. War, something that Portia had read about. She knew it was bad news.

War was killing, deaths and sadness. She didn't want to die. She didn't want her family to die.

Then a feeling came over Portia, and she didn't like it. It felt cold. She heard voices in her head telling the worst. She was imaging death and the outcome of the war. She didn't know what this feeling was. And she didn't want to ask. Maybe her family were feeling it too.

She walked away from the door with tears down her face. She never really cried. But she heard her mother say once; there is a first time for everything.

She sat on a rock and held her face to her knees which she had brought upon where she was sitting. And she cried quietly. Not knowing what to do.

She waited until the person had left the house. He was a man, with long blonde hair, it was longer than hers.

Then her parents followed him and saw their daughter rested upon the rock. Her mother gasped and ran to her, flinging her arms over her and pulling her to her body. Her father walked slowly to them. He waited for a moment and then he spoke.

"Did you hear everything?" he asked looking down at them.

"Yes," sniffed Portia. "Well not everything, I heard up to you said about the war."

Her father nodded. "And you understand why we are afraid?"

Portia then looked up at him. "What is afraid?"

Her mother pulled back and looked at her husband.

"Portia afraid is a feeling," said her mother. "If I am guessing right, it's what you're feeling now."

"When all you see and hear is bad?" asked Portia. "Because if that's right, I do understand father and I want to live and not to die, without doing things with you and with my own life."

Her mother smiled. "The heart of an eleven year old, well nothing is going to happen yet." She paused. "Not to you anyway. You're starting Hogwarts now and that's one of the safest places you can be in a war."

"Yes, you're right Jayne and with Dumbledore there as headmaster you can be sure that you'll be living until past your teenage years." Her father then frowned and walked back into the cottage.

Her mother pulled her in to the cottage too and gave Portia her Hogwarts letter.

As Portia opened it, a prayer came into her head. She prayed that she would go to Hogwarts and finish her education. She prayed that she would live until she was older and she prayed to be protected. She wanted someone like her mother had.

Her father protected her mother, so Portia decided she needed a man too.

She didn't care that if the man would look like her father, or she might have to have babies with him, all she cared about was that she would be protected from the war.

And before she went to bed that night she said these prayers to God or whoever was listening to her at the time. As she said them she felt tears crawl down her face. But she made herself not be afraid. She knew what she wanted and she was going to do anything to get it. Anything.

She laid in her bed, thinking up a plan. But nothing came into place. But she had a few weeks to go until she was in Hogwarts. She would think of the plan then, when she was surrounded by people who hopefully would help her.